Pain, Pain, Go Away!

"That poor soul." That's what I think when Bonfils Blood Center sends me a letter telling me where my donated blood went. One pint of my blood--one of several from many donors--went to a woman who had a childbirth that would have killed her in times past. Bonfils invited her and all the donors to a party to meet each other. A few dozen donors divided by eight pints per gallon means she lost half or more of her blood. A friend and employee of Bonfils told me about another patient--just a kid--who needed over 100 units of blood. Today, I'm feeling a bit puffed up because I got my six-gallon donor pin. (Not too puffed up, though--my father has donated over 20 gallons and a man named Ned Habich has donated 60.) I went to the bloodmobile parked in front of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Denver this afternoon. I answered a questionnaire and Bonfils tested my iron, pulse and blood pressure. At 118 pounds and with an iron level of 42 ( yay !), I barely met their thresholds f

Do you take vitamins and minerals? I do, and I can see a difference when I take them. When I don't, my skin breaks out and generally doesn't look up to par. I had nosebleeds before taking a big dose of zinc every day, and was mildly anemic before taking iron. But I said to myself, I eat a healthy diet. I don't smoke or drink much alcohol. Why don't I absorb more of the vitamins and minerals I eat? Vitamin and mineral absorption is the problem I'm going to address in this post. There are a lot of everyday foods, drinks, diets and medicines that can make vitamins and minerals pass right through you. I don't want you to give up all your favorite foods and beverages, but consider making some small changes to make the most of your vitamins. Coffee and Tea. I wrote in my last post that coffee and tea interfere with iron absorption. (By "tea," I'm sure that means camellia sinensis , like black tea or green tea or white tea, not apple-cinnamon-vanilla o

A few weeks ago, I had a mystery to solve: I'd been taking iron and zinc pills, and an iron test done when I gave blood showed the highest iron reading I'd ever had. But in late August, my full blood workup showed iron deficiency. My nosebleeds had returned, too. "Your iron level is low," said the letter from my doctor, "and an over the counter vitamin will help. A low iron level needs to be worked up with a colonoscopy or other GI screening." That sounded not only uncomfortable, but expensive. I looked elsewhere for clues. A search on Google Scholar turned up a study * involving coffee. "A cup of coffee reduced iron absorption from a hamburger meal by 39%..." I downloaded the full text . The study was done on humans, it stated what the subjects ate, and didn't sound like the researchers had any agenda. I'd been drinking more coffee--maybe that was my problem. Seeing if it made me feel any different wouldn't cost anything. So every day

I've long thought that eating as our ancient ancestors did has some keys to health. The latest research in paleontology suggests that they didn't have a constant supply of food, they might have gone for short periods (like a day or so) without eating. Having read the benefits of intermittent fasting, I decided to give it a try. Today, I put off eating until 6 p.m., consuming nothing but water. The upsides: My blood sugar was in the 70s during the fast(that's the low end of normal). And I had no nasal congestion. The downsides: I was hungry all day! If one of the points of fasting is to avoid thinking about food, it didn't work. I took a nap in the afternoon and dreamed about food. Then I got up, prepared a feast, and ate for two hours. I had two plates of sausage and vegetables, eggplant with cheese, tossed salad and goat cheese. Then a tablespoon of honey, low-carb hot cocoa, low-carb ice cream, and coffee. After taking a break to talk on the phone, I went to the groce

Some readers know I love the Golden Era (c. 1920-1963): I swing dance, live in a hundred-year-old house, and grow old garden roses. A recent acquaintance even asked me if I drove a Studebaker. I just finished a book that combined my interests in history and health: The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker. In 1944-45, a group of 36 American men, all conscientious objectors, volunteered for a year-long study on starvation. Ancel Keys (of lipid hypothesis fame) ran the tightly controlled experiment. Dr. Michael Eades blogged about the book awhile back and noted the macronutrient balance of a typical subject: The men in this study consumed macronutrients in the following amounts daily: protein 100 gm, fat 30 gm, and carbohydrate 225 gm. If you express these intakes as percentages, you come up with 25.5% protein, 17.2% fat and 57.3% carbohydrate. Average energy intake of the subjects in the experiment: 1570 calories per day. (emphasis mine) The men also had to walk 22 miles each wee

If I listened long enough to you, I'd find a way to believe it's all true. From "Reason to Believe" At the end of January, I saw my doctor for pain in my shoulder. He examined me and assured me it wasn't injured. Since he rarely sees me, he ordered a blood workup while he had me there. This was about the time I cut out wheat; a month later, I started a low-carb diet. I've read a lot about a low-carb diet not ruining your cholesterol or your waistline, so a few weeks ago, I asked my doctor to order another workup. Here are the before and after results. BEFORE January 28, 2010 Typical daily menu: banana protein shake cup of caramel corn one-half baked sweet potato and cottage cheese turkey sandwich small salad one-half apple and low-fat cheese sticks meatloaf and mashed potatoes several chocolate candies Exercise: Daily workout of either 20-minute high-intensity aerobics or 50-minute weightlifting session (Body for Life) Weight: 140 Triglycerides: 46 HDL: 42 Tot

I sometimes hear pronouncements on the dangers of cutting out entire food groups. Generally, these red alerts are rich in adjectives ("dangerous!" "unhealthy!" "extreme!") poor in verbs (like "causes" or "leads to") and generally empty of substantiation (like "your body can't make the needed nutrients found in only X food group"). Just for fun, let's look at some food groups these folks have probably cut out of their own diets, if they ever tried them. Plankton. If these tiny sea creatures nourish fish and water mammals, why couldn't they nourish us too? Insects. "Throughout history," says National Geographic, "people have relished insects as food. Today, many cultures still do." The magazine adds that insects are high in protein and pound for pound, require far fewer resources to grow than beef. Marilyn vos Savant once remarked that the insects farmers kill are far more nutritious than the c

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every

If there's anything that will make my knee flare up, it's dancing for hours on a sticky floor. The floor I danced on last night was the stickiest dance floor I've ever danced on; it was as if it were coated with epoxy. The shoes I wore weren't sueded on the bottom, either, which would have helped. And this being a big dance weekend, I had partners who really put me through the paces. Yet after a few hours of dancing, I had no knee pain. None. I attribute this to a few things. First, after I started a low-carb diet, a lot of my joint pain disappeared: I believe the carbs were inflammatory; my doctor thinks I may have had a wheat allergy. Second, I've been doing a new strength training program (Slow Burn) that has strengthened my legs. Having lifted weights for six years and danced for eight, I thought I had strong legs. But the single-leg, slow-motion doorknob squats have strengthened them further without hurting my knees at all. I noticed something similar a year or

Previously: Body for Life: What Went Wrong, Part 1 and Body for Life: What Went Wrong, Part 2 I didn’t know anything diet or metabolism or how prehistoric humans ate when I first read BFL. But if I’d only read the book with a more critical eye, I might have questioned its assertions. Little Meals throughout the Day? For example, Phillips claims it’s better to eat small, frequent meals throughout the day, or "graze." He has some iffy reasons for doing so. On p. 44 of Body for Life, Phillips states, It’s revealing to take a look at the animal kingdom and notice the relationship between creatures’ eating patterns and their body “types.” At one end of the spectrum are animals that load up on large amounts of food at one “meal,” then go for days, weeks or even months without eating at all. Bears are a prime example of this type of infrequent feeder....At the other end of the eating-pattern spectrum are the frequent feeders: animals that eat almost constantly but in far lesser amou

Previously: Body for Life: What Went Wrong, Part 1 What is a High-Carb and Low-Fat Diet? So if eating a high-carb diet is bad, how does it follow that the solution to balance protein and carbohydrates? Phillips seems to understand that a high carb, low-fat diet hasn’t been good for Americans since they took heed of the Surgeon General's warning about fats (BFL p. 47): In place of fat, more and more carbs were added [to foods]. And the myth that “fat free” means “all you can eat” spread like wildfire. But yet, over the past 10 years [since 1988], we’ve continued to see a dramatic rise in the incidence of obesity....I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years who were consuming a low-fat, high-carb diet and exercising, but they were getting even fatter! Why not just adopt a low-carb or a paleo diet, then? Phillips writes of our ancient ancestors’ health and vigor before the advent of farming and attributes their good health to their diet. But according to what I

Some readers may know that I was a Body for Life enthusiast for six years. At age 33, I had no workout program, was a little on the fleshy side, and yet I was constantly hungry. A friend showed me a book called Body for Life (BFL) by Bill Phillips, and I was so impressed by the before and after photos that I tried the program. The plan consisted of eating six servings each of carbohydrates and proteins and two servings of green vegetables per day, plus six short but hard workouts per week. (A serving is the size of your fist.) I did, indeed, go down two dress sizes quickly and build muscle while eating more on BFL. Four years later, I had recovered from a sprained neck and back from a car wreck and resumed BFL in earnest. But it stopped working, and by late 2009, I had put on 20 pounds of fat despite following the diet as well as I had before and being diligent about workouts. Why did the same program produce different results at different times? This is the question I’ll explore in th

Does Molly's fur coat make her look fat? My dog, Molly, has been to the vet a few times in the past couple of months for an infection and teeth cleaning. The vet recommended that Molly lose some weight and asked how much Molly was eating. "One and a half cups a day of ... dog food and some cabbage," I said. And yes, that's using a measuring cup, I explained, not a slurpee cup. Yes, Molly gets exercise--she runs on the treadmill every day. Nonetheless, the vet suggested giving Molly less food. Is this a good idea? Let's consider some observations, facts and assumptions. First, is Molly fat? Someone at the dog park nicknamed her "Marshmallow," and her hips look quite a bit wider than her chest when she sits down. Yet there aren't rolls of fat on her. When I pinch her fat around her middle, it's only 3/8" thick. Her hind quarters are too firm to pinch. Her midriff is thick and her hips are wide--but maybe that just means she isn't built lik

Have you ever had the wrong idea about something, then saw the truth and wondered how you could have been so blind? Most of the common sense people have about weight gain is an illusion. My mother has been overweight most of her life. She's been sedentary since middle age (she started getting arthritis around age 40), but pictures of her in her 20s and 30s from before my time show her on horseback when she and my father went hunting together. She also took care of my brothers and sisters with few modern conveniences. In other words, she was overweight but pretty active. My parents and I always ate dinner together, almost always steak or chicken, potatoes, gravy, bread, corn and green beans. My mom never seemed to overeat. She wasn't a drinker, either. I was an average thin kid (I didn't like my mom's cooking) and a little on the fleshy side as an adult until age 34 when I started Body for Life. After three years on this program, which includes lots of protein, carbs and

I've never understood why runners keep running until they wear out their knees. Or why dancers will dance until they have blisters on their feet. Maybe it's good that I get too tired to run that far or dance that long. In spite of this blessing in disguise, I started getting knee pain from weightlifting. Since I didn't get knee pain during weightlifting sessions, it took me awhile to figure out what was causing it. Once I realized it was squats, I stopped doing them and felt better. However, my weightlifting routines became limited to what my joints, not my muscles, would bear, particularly for my lower body. On the recommendation of a few bloggers I read (Dr. Michael Eades and Tom Naughton--see blog roll), I tried Slow Burn by Fred Hahn and Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades. The Drs. Eades explain in the beginning of the book why strength training is good for you (improved metabolism, stronger bones, more flexibility, less back pain and better athletic performance, among ot

Time may heal all wounds, but zinc may help them faster. Three years ago, my diabetic mother developed a sore on her heel. According to my father, who has been dressing the wound during those years, it was the size of a silver dollar (1.5" diameter) and all the way to the bone--about 3/4." Their doctors refused to treat it and sent them to the hospital instead. Over the years, doctors, nurses, aides and my father have been dressing it, treating it with medicinal honey, and cutting away crusty skin around it in a painful, weekly doctor's office procedure. In three years, the size of the wound went down to the size of a quarter (1") and 1/16" deep. It still required the aforementioned care. Having had such good results with zinc healing my nose from septoplasy (I'd had nosebleeds for ten years after the surgery), I gave my mom a bottle of 100mg zinc tablets two weeks ago. She's been taking one every day. The results, according to my parents: The wound is

I've had acne for almost 30 years. It started with a few pimples when I was 12 and escalated into cysts when I was 20. A coworker actually said to me, "God, what happened to your face?" "Oh," I wish I'd replied, "I bet you say that to all the girls." What's the French word for repartee you think of as you're walking out of the party, down the steps? My sister had acne too. She was good-looking until she'd been on meth for about a year, and afterwards lived on coffee, Pepsi and burritos. She blamed her acne on--wait for it--green beans and washcloths. I should have taken a clue from her diet. My poison isn't Pepsi, but Coke. When I stopped drinking Coke in 2007 to help my stomach, my skin cleared up. It was less dry and flaky, too. So except for falling off the wagon and going through caffeine withdrawal again in 2007, all has been well. Then I started drinking Coke Zero a few weeks ago. "Since it doesn't have sugar," I

If high quality meat and cheese are upwards of $5 per pound and potatoes, bread and bananas cost a fraction of that, the low-carb meat-and-cheese diet sounds like it would be much more expensive than the high-carb diet. Does it work out that way in real life? Since I buy almost everything with a debit card and record all the transactions on my computer, I have records for everything I've spent on food, health care and skin care. (The only serious cash I spend is for cover charges to dance clubs.) These three things--the food I eat, my skin, and overall health--have significantly changed since I started a low-carb diet back in February. I decided to analyze how the diet has affected my spending in those areas, which I believe have changed because of my low-carb diet. Although I have data for all 2009, I have only three whole months' data for the time I've been low-carb. For 2010, I used the period March 1 through May 31. In addition, I excluded some unusual items for 2009:

Eating out is a challenge with diet restrictions, especially when your diet contradicts conventional wisdom about what a healthy diet is. Maybe that's why low-brow grocers and restaurants--you know, those places for people who just don't care what they put in their bodies--seem to have more low-carb offerings than health food stores and natty eateries. Most nice restaurants put a basket of savory bread in front of you when you're hungry. Except for the ubiquitous grilled chicken salad, everything on the menu has fruit, rice, potatoes or pasta. Even at the two airports where I recently ate (not exactly fine dining there), most of the food looked starchy and sugary. But the burger from Burger King was fine without the bun and the quarter-pound, cheesy hot dog in Indiana hit the spot. (Certain processed meats give me a sinus headache--this didn't.) And the chicken club from a Hardee's in that state was just as tasty as those I get at Carl's Jr. (the same company)

Until recently, I'd been having bad nosebleeds for a while. Specifically, since November 1999 when I had septoplasty surgery. My otolaryngologist recommended it because I had a deviated septum (that's the stiff middle part of the inside of the nose) and enlarged turbinates . I had frequent sinus infections and supposedly, this surgery would help prevent them. (It didn't. But it was nice to be able to breath through both sides of my nose at the same time.) About a month ago, I read the following in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution p. 126, published in 1972: About vitamins in general, I don't believe in minimum daily requirements. I believe in optimum dosage. I have used vitamins in megadoses in my practice with great success. .... You cannot safely increase the standard dosage of Vitamin A (5,000 international units) nor of Vitamin D (400 international units). But so-called overdoses of the other vitamins are simply flushed away by the kidneys. And the mineral and vitami

Let me tell you about the time I woke up on the sidewalk. It was Tuesday, December 14, 2004. I had donated blood and was in a hurry to get back to the office and finish the stack of work on my desk. When I left the bloodmobile, I didn't bother going back into the Marriott to rest up by the fire with some cookies and juice; I ran for the shuttle instead. In the course of my life, I had donated gallons of blood without trouble. After I got on the shuttle, I was in trouble. It was as if I was suddenly infected with a virus: I was sick to my stomach and felt terrible and weak. Being on a moving vehicle made it worse, but I saw no place to get off and sit down. I wondered if this was what it felt like to bleed to death; if this was how soldiers felt when they were wounded. A group of Latina girls looked at me with worry. The shuttle pulled up to the Adam's Mark Hotel where there was a dormant flower bed in a low wall by the sidewalk. Finally--a place to get off and sit down. I got u

The more I read, the more I realize that people have to be their own advocates concerning their health. There's a lot of information out there, but a lot of it is contradictory--even information that comes from doctors. Without medical training, how do you sort it out? Lately I've been reading The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant. Readers of a certain age may remember the Monty Hall dilemma from her column in Parade magazine in 1990. She correctly answered a reader's question about probability. The problem was so simple that grade-school age children could--and did--test it for themselves. Yet vos Savant got mountains of mail from professors and Ph.D.s telling her she was wrong. There's a section in her book about averages. "You can drown in a river with an average depth of two feet," she observes. This reminded me of a woman I met last weekend. As she and I talked, the conversation turned to health. She was quite a bit overweight and said she

I'd like to share some really outstanding health-related blogs with you. All of these bloggers struggled with the health problems they write about. All of them go by science and results, not the dogma that is common in some areas of medicine. All of these authors have helped me and my family in some way: Dr. Eades' blog informed me that excess carbs were the cause of my acid reflux; Dr. Davis's blog has been a lifesaver for my diabetic mother; Tom Naughton's blog usually makes me laugh. If you like their messages, most of them have books or movies (in some cases, free e-books and newsletters) for your reference or that of friends and family who aren't on the Internet. Happy reading! Dr. William Davis , a cardiologist, focuses on preventive medicine. He writes quite a bit about diabetes as well. If you'd rather make lifestyle changes than have heart surgery, this blog may interest you. Dr. Michael Eades , co-author of Protein Power, writes about low-carb living.

A few people have asked me how it is that carbohydrates can cause weight gain, but eating fat doesn't tend to do so. The thing is, "calories in, calories out" is a myth. Unlike a car that simply burns gas, our bodies respond differently to different fuels. There are a few reasons that carbohydrates, more so than fat or protein, can cause weight gain: It's easy to overeat carbohydrates. Most carbs aren't very filling. Everyone who has ever eaten half a box of cereal, a bag of chips or box of cookies in one sitting, raise your hand. Ever eaten a stick of butter or a whole jar of mayonnaise at once? I didn't think so. Carbs are addictive for some people. Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist, recommends a low-carb, wheat-free diet to all his patients. He reports that 30% of them go through wheat withdrawal . Carbs can make you hungry. Eating carbohydrates raises your blood sugar, which causes your body to release insulin into the bloodstream. In some people, this is

When I was nine years old, I had a allergy test that involved a nurse putting about 100 scratches on my back and applying a potential allergen to each scratch. If I remember right, I was allergic to about 90 things. I took weekly allergy shots for years after that, completely desensitizing me to needles. But the allergies never really left. It's the wrong time of year for allergies, but I've had them over the past few weeks. I used to just take a Sudafed and ibuprofin and suffer until the pain went away. Lately, though, I've noticed that allergy attacks happen when I eat something different: non-dairy creamer, a particular brand of sausage (which probably has something that's not on the label), and a cookie (which contained wheat). A test a few years ago showed that I don't have celiac, a condition where gluten (a protein in wheat) damages the intestines. But you don't have to have a permission slip from your doctor to eliminate things from your diet. A few mon

My calculus II teacher, Monica Fleischauer, once told our class, "Good mathematicians are basically lazy." I took that to mean that they didn't make extra work for themselves--the opposite of the saying, "You get out of it what you put into it." The statement about being lazy seems to apply to losing weight. A few months ago when I was on Body-for-Life, I was working out six days a week: lifting weights, doing intense cardio workouts and ballet strength conditioning. And I'd gained 20 pounds over the last few years. About two months ago, I dropped BFL and slashed the carbs. I eat meat, eggs, nuts, greens, and protein powder drinks (homemade) until I'm satisfied. I'm pretty good about limiting the carbs. Last night, I had a Netflix night with half a bag of pork rinds, hot wings and a diet root beer. Right now, I'm enjoying a low-carb brownie made of protein powder, peanut butter, nuts and coconut, and a coffee with cream, no sugar. For exercise, t

Last Tuesday I had a chocolate chip cookie. "I've been awfully good, and one cookie won't hurt me," I rationalized. But eating that cookie gave me a stomach ache, acid reflux for two days and painful nasal congestion--the viscous, sticky kind that won't move--for four days. How did one cookie make me feel so bad? Was is the extra carbs? According to Pepperidge Farm's web site , one of their chocolate chip cookies (similar to the one I ate) has 20g of carbohydate. That's quite a bit if you eat low-carb, but that's less than a Luna bar, which has 25g of carb--and which I can eat without any ill effects. The Luna bar also has more sugar. What the Luna bar doesn't have is wheat. I stopped eating wheat months ago; this was my first lapse since then. There's a saying that it's not the poison, but the dose, but in my case, wheat is poison in any amount. Some people are amazed at those of us who don't eat wheat, but I never found it the hardshi

Let me tell you about my 38th birthday. It was 2007. I took a frozen dinner to my parents' house and ate it while I watched a movie; it was all the excitement I could stand. In prior years, I'd gone out on a weeknight and worn out dance partners half my age. But that year, I had a sprained neck and back and TMJ problems from a car wreck and an undiagnosed acute infection of H. pylori and esophageal ulcer. I was working a lot of hours and the helper my employer hired had the IQ of a bowl of cornflakes. Between ibuprofin, antibiotics, acid blockers and vitamins, I'd soon be taking 20 pills a day. The relief I found didn't come from massage or acupuncture, but music. Specifically, it came from old R&B from the 40s and 50s played every Saturday night on a radio program called R&B Jukebox. (What's old R&B? Readers of a certain age may remember the cast of the Cosby Show lip synching "The Night Time is the Right Time" by Ray Charles, David Lee Roth&

Back in January, I stopped eating wheat (except for a few cookies on Sundays) and in February I cut back on sugars in all forms. A few weeks ago, I cut out starchy, sugary foods like fruit, potatoes, beans, yogurt, and Odwalla protein drinks that pack 40 grams of sugar per bottle from my diet. Along with neglecting carbs, I've been neglecting a few other things: Sudafed. I can't remember the last one I took. Ibuprofin. I've had two tablets in the past several weeks; I used to take them almost daily. Gas-X (a gas reducer). Zantac (an acid reducer). My chiropracter. Trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour. When you can whiz through the day on seven hours' sleep, and get by on six, why go to bed early? Four-hour naps on Sunday afternoons. See above. Weighing myself. My sagging jeans tell me I'm losing fat. Expensive skin care products. I don't know whether my skin is that much better or my priorities have changed, but buying anything fancier than drug store sunsc

But I got it back, I'm feelin' better every day. Tell all those pencil pushers, better get out of my way. We all know that diabetics are supposed to avoid sugar, right? And since starches are sugars that are glued together, so to speak, diabetics shouldn't be eating very much of them, either. Right? Especially since complications from diabetes include blindness, amputation and organ damage. Aren't those good reasons for sticking to a diet low in sugar and starch--in other words, a low-carb diet? I'm not giving advice, I'm just stating what I believe used to be common knowledge and common sense. So why don't more doctors and health organizations tell diabetics to avoid carbohydrates? My mother has had diabetes for 20 years and says she never got any advice from her doctors on what to eat. Sadly, nobody in our family knew that starches were as bad as sugars, and she continued eating bread, potatoes, and cereal. What advice might she have gotten if they had cou